Our culture demonises those who don’t work – but maybe it’s time we were more like Homer Simpson and Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, writes Josh CohenIn 1999, crowds of art lovers, many of them baffled, filed into London’s Tate gallery to view My Bed, a work quickly established as one of the most iconic and notorious of our age. Tracey Emin’s installation painstakingly recreated her bed as it appeared after an alcohol-fuelled breakdown, triggered by the end of a relationship. A disordered tangle of used and dirty stockings, towels and sheets, the undersheet spilling freely over the bed’s base, was bordered by the accumulated debris of an exhausted life. This was not a bed of peaceful rest, airy dreams or frenzied coupling, but of illness, exhaustion and despair. The intoxicants and condoms strewn around conveyed not a lively appetite, but a quest for physical and psychic numbness, plunging us into a state the French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg called “weariness of the self”.Ehrenberg diagnosed this weariness as the essential malaise of our time. He described a chronic incapacity arising from a state of perpetual work – not only the long hours spent in waged employment, but the state of permanent busyness induced by daily demands to act and consume. This has been accentuated, since Ehrenberg published his book, by the 24/7 imperatives of online life: follow, like, update, upload, link and (of course) buy. Continue reading...

Project leader echoes Neil Armstrong’s quote after rover’s successful separation from landerChina’s space agency has posted the first photo of its Chang’e 4 lunar rover on the far side of the moon after its groundbreaking touchdown on Thursday.The rover – named Yutu 2, or Jade Rabbit 2 – left the spacecraft, drove off a ramp and began making tracks on the moon’s surface at 10.22pm on Thursday, about 12 hours after Chang’e 4 landed. Continue reading...

Despite much debate in UK and US there is still little agreement over how safe e-cigarettes areSifting through contradictory evidence is common when it comes to choosing the right thing to do to improve our health, not least at new year when many of us promise to leave old habits behind and make a fresh start. One topic that is almost guaranteed to provoke arguments is e-cigarettes. Thousands of research papers have been published about these devices over the past decade. But we do not seem to be much closer to a global consensus on their risks or benefits, and arguably the debate is becoming more entrenched. What is going on?A number of factors appear to be fuelling this, but in 2018 one more than any other seemed to be driving the debate. It relates to the consequences of e-cigarette use by young people, and the extent that youth vaping will lead to smoking. In other words: are e-cigarettes creating a new generation of nicotine users, and will these vapers become the smokers of the future? Continue reading...

Some scientists are beginning to question whether it really was an asteroid impact that led to the dinosaurs’ extinction – instead, they think it may have been a supervolcano in India. Graihagh Jackson investigatesWhen we were children, many of us learned about dinosaurs and their demise. A massive asteroid, larger than Mount Everest is tall, smashed into the Earth, causing chaos in the form of tsunamis, wildfires and earthquakes. Plumes of debris created a darkness so stifling that it caused up to 75% of all animals to become extinct.However, a small group of scientists is questioning this hypothesis and putting forward another theory: volcanism. The Deccan traps in India are home to some of the biggest volcanic features in the world and there is evidence to suggest there was a lot of activity about 66m years ago – the same time the dinosaurs were wiped out. Continue reading...

The history of artificial intelligence is entwined with state and corporate power. It must now reflect those it has excludedPicture a system that makes decisions with huge impacts on a person’s prospects – even decisions of life and death. Imagine that system is complex and opaque: it sorts people into winners and losers, but the criteria by which it does so are never made clear. Those being assessed do not know what data the system has gathered about them, or with what data theirs is being compared. And no one is willing to take responsibility for the system’s decisions – everyone claims to be fulfilling their own cog-like function.Related: Women must act now, or male-designed robots will take over our lives | Ivana Bartoletti Continue reading...

Collision will ‘cause fireworks’ but probably won’t happen for about 2.5 billion yearsAs if battered post-Christmas finances, a looming disorderly Brexit and the prospect of a fresh nuclear arms race were not enough to dampen spirits, astronomers have declared that a nearby galaxy will slam into the Milky Way and could knock our solar system far into the cosmic void.The unfortunate discovery was made after scientists ran computer simulations on the movement of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the many satellite galaxies that orbits the Milky Way. Rather than circling at a safe distance, or breaking free of the Milky Way’s gravitational pull, the researchers found the LMC is destined to clatter into the galaxy we call home. Continue reading...

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From Pink Floyd’s mental hell to the secret lair of space Nazis, artists have striven unceasingly to sketch the side of the moon China’s Chang’e 4 just reached‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.” These could easily have been the words of the Chinese team behind Chang’e 4, shortly before it set off on its successful journey to the moon’s far side. But as any rock fan will tell you, they were immortalised 45 years ago at the end of Pink Floyd’s track Brain Damage. It was the line that gave their most famous album, The Dark Side of the Moon, its title. And it remains one of the most enduring phrases in popular culture – copied, spoofed and riffed on by generations to come (even Krusty the Clown has a “lost” album entitled Dark Side of the Moonpie).It’s not hard to see why artists have a fascination with the moon’s far side. It speaks of the unknowable, the distant and the elusive – and is especially ripe for metaphor. For Pink Floyd, the moon’s dark side was used to symbolise the darker forces of human nature on an album that delved into unusual territories for pop: mental illness, mortality and the scars of the second world war. As songwriter Roger Waters explained in the 1994 book Bricks in the Wall: “The line ‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon’ is me speaking to the listener, saying, ‘I know you have these bad feelings and impulses because I do too, and one of the ways I can make direct contact with you is to share with you the fact that I feel bad sometimes.’” Continue reading...

Chang’e 4 will test soil composition, try to grow plants, and listen for traces of Big BangWhen we look up at the full moon, we only ever see one face: the “man in the moon” is always gazing back at us. Scientists believe that the far side, eternally hidden from view, may hold the key to fundamental mysteries about the moon’s formation and its earliest history.China’s Chang’e 4 mission could reveal new clues to the cataclysmic collision that created the moon and uncover the origins of the water that is unexpectedly abundant in lunar soil. Continue reading...

Two skull-like stone carvings and a stone trunk depicting the Flayed Lord were found during excavation in Puebla stateMexican experts say they have found the first temple of the Flayed Lord, a pre-Hispanic fertility god depicted as a skinned human corpse.Related: Conquistadors sacrificed and eaten by Aztec-era people, archaeologists say Continue reading...

With its Chang’e 4 landing, China has eclipsed US and Russian achievements. Expect them to take fresh interest in the moonChina’s achievement in landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, announced by Beijing’s state media this morning, has ramifications that go far beyond the simple statement of this being a “first” for mankind. It puts China on the map of international space exploration on a par with the existing space powers of the United States and Russia – the European Union to a lesser extent – but also adds a new dimension. It is the first time a landing has been attempted on the far side of the moon, with the particular communications challenges this entails, and it has been a success.The first response from the US space agency, Nasa, was generous, as scientists to scientists: what China had managed was a “first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment”. The response in political and military quarters in Washington, as in Moscow, however, is likely to reflect trepidation. There is now a serious newcomer to be considered. Continue reading...

A Chinese spacecraft has made the first landing on the far side of the moon, touching down in the South Pole-Aitken basin. The mission aims to take detailed measurements of the moon’s terrain and mineral composition

Lander sends back first close-up shot of previously unexplored side of the moon

Chang’e 4 will explore giant crater, possibly offering more clues as to moon’s formationA Chinese spacecraft could shortly become the first ever to land on the “far side” of the moon, in a milestone for human space exploration. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is aiming to land the craft in the unexplored South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest, oldest, deepest, crater on the moon’s surface.Early reports of a successful landing by the robotic probe, Chang’e 4, ended in confusion after state-run media China Daily and CGTN deleted tweets celebrating a successful mission. China Daily’s tweet said: '“China’s Chang’e 4 landed on the moon’s far side, inaugurating a new chapter in mankind’s lunar exploration history.” Continue reading...

Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed home its first close-up images of Ultima Thule, a lump of rock the shape of an unfinished snowman that lies 4bn miles away on the edge of the solar system.The excited scientists of the New Horizons team led by principal investigator Alan Stern discuss their findings so far. 'We could not be happier,' he said. Continue reading...

Major study at Addenbrooke’s hospital could lead to cancer detectors in GPs’ surgeriesA breathalyser test that could revolutionise cancer diagnosis is being tested in the UK. The Breath Biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients.Scientists hope it will lead to a simpler, cheaper method of spotting cancers early. The breathalyser has the potential to save thousands of lives and millions of pounds in healthcare costs, its developers have claimed. Continue reading...

Images of rock on the edge of the solar system were taken on the most distant flyby in historyNasa’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed home its first close-up images of Ultima Thule, a lump of rock the shape of an unfinished snowman that lies 4 billion miles away on the edge of the solar system.Taken as the probe sped past the body in the early hours of New Year’s Day, the pictures reveal a dark reddish object about 21 miles long and 10 miles wide that spins on its axis once every 15 hours or so. The colour image of Ultima Thule, revealing its reddish tint, was taken at 05.01 GMT on New Year’s Day from a distance of about 18,000 miles, 30 minutes before the probe made its closest pass of the space rock. Continue reading...

Missions like Nasa’s flyby of Ultima Thule, and China’s to place a lander on the far side of the moon, are more than a triumph of technologySome things are almost too extraordinary to comprehend. Take what is almost the smallest and simplest measurement from the New Horizons space probe which has just passed Ultima Thule: it is travelling at 32,000 miles an hour, a speed that is more than 50 times faster than anyone alive on Earth has travelled – unless they are a military pilot or an astronaut. In fact, it’s close to magic: Puck boasts in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that he can girdle the Earth in 40 minutes; New Horizons could do it in 50. This is not an easy speed at which to control anything. Yet, while moving that fast, and so far from Earth that it takes radio signals, travelling at the speed of light, more than six hours to reach it, the probe has been flown within 2,400 miles of a lump of rock 20 miles long which is itself hurtling through space in an orbit it has kept since before the Earth was formed.As Nasa announced the mission’s success, China was attempting to place a lander on the far side of the moon to help to decide whether a radio telescope could some day be built there, entirely screened from the interference of earthly civilisation. Nasa has already managed to put another spacecraft in orbit around a tiny asteroid, only 500m in diameter and much closer to Earth than Ultima Thule: the plan here is to land on the rock, collect samples, and return with them to Earth by 2023. There are two Nasa probes on Mars, sending back a stream of data, videos, and even the sounds of the wind on an alien planet. Space exploration demands extraordinary technologies, and has helped to produce some of them. But it also requires extraordinary human qualities: for astronauts, great bravery, but for everyone, ingenuity, imagination, discipline, and even a sort of altruism. The scientists and engineers, and the astronauts themselves, all need to work for decades for little material reward: New Horizons will bring nothing back but knowledge. There is nothing to exploit in the outer reaches of the solar system, just the boundless satisfaction of understanding the universe a little bit better. Continue reading...

Magicians are under fire for claiming they use neurolinguistic programming to read people’s mindsSome psychologists are upset at the deployment of purported scientific techniques in magic tricks, according to the Times.The newspaper cites a study (paywall) co-authored by Gustav Kuhn, a reader in psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, in which a group of people watched a magic trick. Those who knew that the performer was a magician were as likely to believe his false claims about being able to read a person’s mind as those who were told he was a psychologist. Yet according to Kuhn, the neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques claimed by some magicians – in which facial cues and body language can be read – is “complete pseudoscience”. So how do magicians feel about this? Continue reading...

Scientists celebrate probe’s successful completion of most distant space flyby in history

‘The Nation’s T rex’ will stand upright for the first time in 66m years alongside 720 specimens as part of a five-year overhaul“He’s decapitating a Triceratops,” Siobhan Starrs observes casually. “You want drama with the T rex. We’ll give it to you.”The gory scene, worthy of Jurassic Park, is frozen in time in the 31,000sq-ft fossil hall at the popular Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, which reopens to the public on 8 June after a massive overhaul spanning five years and costing $125m. Continue reading...

Nasa sampling mission skims a mile above tiny asteroid Bennu where it will try to land and collect samplesThe Nasa spacecraft Osiris-Rex has gone into orbit around an ancient asteroid, setting a pair of records.Osiris-Rex spacecraft entered orbit on Monday around Bennu, 70m miles (110m kilometres) from Earth. It is the smallest celestial body ever to be orbited by a spacecraft, at just 500 metres across (1,600ft). Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following puzzles about the number 20191) Date jam Continue reading...

Calculations to kick-start the new yearUPDATE: To read the solutions click here.To welcome the New Year, we’re going to celebrate the number 2019. Here’s one numerical factoid readers may find charming:2019 is the smallest number that can be written in 6 ways as the sum of the squares of 3 primes:

Newly knighted cancer scientist Mel Greaves explains why a cocktail of microbes could give protection against diseaseMel Greaves has a simple goal in life. He is trying to create a yoghurt-like drink that would stop children from developing leukaemia.The idea might seem eccentric; cancers are not usually defeated so simply. However, Professor Greaves is confident and, given his experience in the field, his ideas are being taken seriously by other cancer researchers. Continue reading...

Modern high-intensity workouts are seductively short – but do they offer the same life-extending benefits as established exercise regimes?Is it boom time for the fitness business? One in seven people in the UK is believed to be a member of a gym, 2018 saw the number of gyms exceed 7,000 for the first time, and by 2022 the private health and fitness club market alone is predicted to be worth a whopping £3.9bn. Such is the demand for workout spaces that the Financial Times wondered: “Is gym the new pub?” Continue reading...

It’s no easy task for parents, but there are ways to start this crucial conversation“If you had a question about sex, where would you go?” I ask my 12-year-old daughter, Orla. She doesn’t look up from her phone. “I’d ask online,” she deadpans. “then delete my browser history.”“You wouldn’t come to me?” I venture, worried, hurt, amused and (a tiny part) relieved. “Mum, if I asked you about sex, I’d then have to imagine you having sex and that would be traumatic for me,” is the answer I get back. Continue reading...

Cavernous 18th-century store reveals link to lost trade in ice blocks from Norwegian fjordFor the well to-do residents of Georgian London, serving chilled drinks at a festive party was a more complicated process than today. In the absence of electricity to make ice cubes and keep them frozen, they had to source their ice from elsewhere.For the most discerning hosts, that meant using blocks of purest frozen Norwegian fjord, which was shipped to London’s docks and then carefully stored until required to be chipped into glasses and clinked. Continue reading...

Psychedelic fungi may still be in bloom on New Year’s Day due to climate changeAn unnaturally late first frost across the UK means magic mushroom hunters could be in line for a remarkable natural high this year.Psychedelic mushrooms may still be in bloom on New Year’s Day, as the subzero temperatures that would normally have appeared by this time of year are yet to arrive. Continue reading...

As scepticism rises, PHE says e-cigarettes could help more people quit smokingThe government is launching a new campaign to try to convince the UK’s smokers that vaping is not as harmful as smoking and a good way to quit, in a bid to counter the scepticism generated by some scientific studies and media headlines.Public Health England (PHE), which maintains that vaping is 95% less harmful than tobacco, is releasing a short video of an experiment which reveals the amount of sticky black tar that accumulates in the lungs of a heavy smoker, collected in a bell jar. By contrast, the same nicotine intake through vaping releases only a trace of residue. Continue reading...

Dr Hannah Fry won the Christopher Zeeman medal in August for her contributions to the public understanding of the mathematical sciences. Ian Sample has invited her on the podcast to discuss her love of numbers. Plus, he asks, can we really use this discipline to predict human behaviour?Maths probably isn’t something you’re thinking about in the build-up to the new year. If anything, it’s the nth thing on your mind, where n equals a centillion. But for UCL’s Dr Hannah Fry, mathematics is often at the forefront of her thinking. For instance, she’s worked out whether Santa would get fatter from eating all the mince pies, or thinner, from having to shimmy up and down chimneys all night long. She’s thought about how game theory could help you beat your uncle at monopoly, and even the optimal length of tinsel you should have used on your Christmas tree.Increasingly, though, Fry’s research focuses on whether we can use maths, coding and modelling to predict human behaviour. This year, she won the Christopher Zeeman medal for her contributions to the public understanding of the mathematical sciences, so Ian Sample invited her on the podcast to discuss her love of numbers. Plus, he asks, can we really use this discipline to model and predict human behaviour?

GPS III satellites to provide more precise locations and be more resilient against jammingThe first of a new generation of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites was launched on Sunday.A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida at 1351 GMT (05.51am PST) and the satellite was deployed into its intended orbit almost two hours later. Continue reading...

Psychiatry professor Brendan Kelly, Peter Wilson, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and Dr Ian Flintoff debate Suzanne Moore’s enthusiasm for the ideas of the father of psychoanalysisSuzanne Moore describes Sigmund Freud as “revolutionary” and says that he is now more relevant than Marx (Forget Marx. Freud is the radical we need, 26 December). Moore is right: Freud was right and so, for that matter, was Marx, at least on certain points. But Freud really was “properly radical”, not only reclaiming dreams as “psychical phenomena of complete validity” but also, as Moore points out, hearing the voice of Dora, a patient who “refused to be an object of exchange between powerful men” (most notably, perhaps, by terminating her treatment with Freud after just 11 weeks).Freud also decoded “the psychopathology of everyday life”, illuminating the meaning beneath apparent errors and describing such essential human habits as “motivated forgetting”. Today, when public life can seem like an infinite vortex of collective pathology and endless dysfunction, Freud is, perhaps, our surest guide, reassuring us that – at some deeper level – all of this makes sense. Here’s hoping he is right.

The US Office of Technology Assessment should be revived – in 2019 the world will need its expertise more than everMany agree that one of the most pressing problems the world faces today is climate change. The question of what to do about it, however, has become highly politicised. Scepticism about climate change is typically a conservative position and trust in the conclusions of the scientific community a more progressive one. While this politicisation is perhaps most evident in the United States, it is well known in many other countries.But this wasn’t always the case. Between 1972 and 1995, a US agency named the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) existed to provide the practical means to help overcome such politicisation. During its 23-year existence, the OTA was in a unique position to assist members of Congress in understanding complex issues in science and technology. Continue reading...

Sports stars as varied as Stephen Curry and Andrew Flintoff have flirted with conspiracy theories. But they are guided by very human emotionsWith Christmas Day just gone, it seems fitting that Steph Curry already has something he’d probably like to take back. Two weeks ago, the Golden State Warriors star gave the 24-hour news cycle an incredible gift during an appearance on The Ringer’s Winging It podcast. The show, which features the Atlanta Hawks’ Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore as hosts, styles itself as more of a hang session than a proper interview; the point is to give listeners a sense of conversations that players actually have when scoop-hungry reporters aren’t parsing their every word.For 70 minutes the Warriors sharpshooter played along as Carter recalled his experience playing with Curry’s father, Dell. Had you zoned out around the 45-minute mark, you may have missed the playful digression about dinosaurs sounds (“A bone don’t tell you what a sound is,” one player quips) that prompted Curry to suggest that the 1969 moon landing (and the five others that followed) never happened. Clearly, CNN’s forthcoming Apollo 11 documentary can’t get here fast enough for them. Continue reading...

Psychologist, psychotherapist, academic and community worker who founded the Refugee Therapy Centre in LondonThe psychologist and psychotherapist Josephine Klein, who has died aged 92, had a passionate concern for social justice. It underpinned a variety of her initiatives as a researcher, writer and practitioner.Two books came out of a period in the research section of the National Association of Boys’ Clubs in the late 1940s and a subsequent doctorate: The Study of Groups (1956) and Working With Groups: The Social Psychology of Discussion and Decision (1961). They pioneered a theoretical foundation by drawing critically on what was being done elsewhere in sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis, and offered guidance on interventions in a variety of settings – therapeutic, youth and community work. Continue reading...

Marx is all very well, but to effect real change Sigmund Freud’s modern tools of self-examination hold the answers“If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.” I love that Karl Marx said that. I love his self-knowledge. I love the poetry of The Communist Manifesto. I love that he was a seer, a prophet of what we now call globalisation. I love that he understood that there is no sphere of our lives, public or private, into which capital does not weave its way, that there can be no compromises. He is the great thinker of our times, but over the past couple of years I have changed my mind about whether he is the most important one.If I want to read someone whose work truly explains what is happening now, and who is unsettling and properly radical, it is Sigmund Freud I turn to. It is his work that often explains things I would rather not know but recognise happening around me. I haven’t given up on Karl but Siggy strikes me as the man of the hour, the thinker who underpins how we see ourselves. You don’t read Freud for reassurance, but if you want something profound and dazzling, he’s the man. Continue reading...

Many of us have forgotten how to truly unwind. We ask the experts for ways to switch off in an always-on worldHow do you like to kick back, chill out and really relax? This sounds as if it should be a simple question. But I can’t be alone in having spent several evenings over the past couple of weeks slumped on the sofa, “watching TV” while my eyes flicker across Twitter and Facebook, as well as five different WhatsApp groups on my phone.Relaxing is increasingly difficult in our always-on digital world. This first struck me a couple of years ago when I had to stop exercising after an injury. Exercise had always been my go-to “me-time” activity, and without it I felt totally lost. I recently started again, but having only one means to de-stress now feels very limited and I am not even sure it counts as relaxing – it is quite hard work, and inherently competitive. When I find myself at home with a free evening, I often have no idea what to do and inevitably end up staring emptily at one screen or another for hours, before stumbling off to bed, wondering where the time has gone. Continue reading...

Scientists head to Weddell Sea to model changes to the shelf since the calving, in 2017, of the massive iceberg A68In the comings days, a team of scientists, technicians and other specialists will gather onboard the SA Agulhas II, a 13,500-tonne ice-breaker moored off the coast of Antarctica, and make final preparations for one of the most ambitious polar expeditions in decades.Guided by satellite imagery and drones flown from the research ship, the vessel will set off on New Year’s day through the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, part of the Southern Ocean in the Antarctic. The ship’s destination is the Larsen C ice shelf where a trillion tonne iceberg, four times the size of Greater London, calved away in July 2017. Continue reading...

Booming sector received nearly £1.6bn from investors in first eight months of 2018Biotech is one of the most promising parts of the British drug industry, not least according to the investors who continue to pump vast sums into the sector despite the looming shadow of Brexit. In the first eight months of 2018 alone it received nearly £1.6bn, compared with £1.2bn for the entirety of 2017.An unassuming building in a science park near the Hertfordshire town of Stevenage is hosting four biotech firms that hope to achieve a major breakthrough for the field – and go some way to justifying that faith from investors. Continue reading...

IARC’s outgoing director attacks vested interests of critics but admits it could have communicated betterThe head of the UN agency that provoked a massive outcry and some ridicule when it declared that bacon, red meat and glyphosate weedkiller caused cancer has defended its work, denying the announcements were mishandled and insisting on its independence.Its outgoing director, Christopher Wild, fiercely defended the decisions and transparency of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), attacking the vested interests of its critics, many of whom are from multinational corporations. Continue reading...

Researchers explore whether genes and early eating habits may trigger disordered eatingResearchers are trying to identify the role genetics and early eating habits play in conditions such as bulimia and anorexia.Eating disorders, which often arise before adulthood, have been increasing in recent years and about a quarter of young people report having symptoms, according to MQ: Transforming Mental Health, a research charity. Continue reading...

Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders talks about Nasa’s orbit 50 years ago when he photographed Earth as it had never been seen beforeNo one told them to look for the Earth. It was Christmas Eve 1968 and the first manned mission to the moon had reached its destination. As Apollo 8 slipped into lunar orbit the crew prepared to read passages of Genesis for a TV broadcast to the world. But as the command module came around on its fourth lap, there it was visible through the window – a bright blue and white bauble suspended in the black above the relentless grey of the moon.Before that moment 50 years ago, no one had seen an earthrise. The sight sent Bill Anders, the mission photographer, scrambling for his camera. He slapped a 70mm colour roll into the Hasselblad, set the focus to infinity, and started shooting though the telephoto lens. Continue reading...

Jupiter and Venus still dominate the early morning sky as Mercury becomes more challenging to findThroughout this week, the cold mornings will provide a beautiful sight to warm the heart about an hour before sunrise. In the days immediately surrounding Christmas, the three bright planets Mercury, Venus and Jupiter all line up in the south-eastern sky. Looking south-east around 07:00am, Venus and Jupiter will be unmistakable bright beacons that will instantly capture the attention. Mercury is more of a challenge. It will have risen about 15 minutes earlier and so a very clear south-eastern horizon will be needed to see it. Those with such a view, will see the planet appear in the brightening twilight sky. On Christmas Day, sunrise is at 08:05 GMT from London; 08:24 GMT from Manchester; 08:59 from Inverness. The chart shows the view later in the week, looking south at 07:00 GMT on 30 December. On this day, Mercury will have disappeared from view but the waning moon will be near the bright star Spica, and heading towards the planetary alignment. Watch the moon over the succeeding days to see it become a crescent as it heads towards the sun, reaching new moon on 6 January. Continue reading...

Military officer’s stable preserved under ash from eruption of Mount VesuviusArchaeologists have unearthed the petrified remains of a harnessed horse and saddle in the stable of an ancient villa in a Pompeii suburb.The Pompeii archaeological park’s head, Massimo Osanna, told the Italian news agency Ansa that the villa belonged to a high-ranking military officer, perhaps a general, in ancient Roman times. Continue reading...

Rocket science | Crosswords | Gravy on the border | Egypt, Bucks | Hollywood, BirminghamTerence Hall is incorrect regarding the lack of success of Blue Streak (Letters, 20 December). It was the grandfather of Black Arrow which launched the British satellite, Prospero, in 1971. We are the only country in the world to put a satellite into orbit and cancel the programme when a politician stated there was no market for small satellites.

The rocket launch marked the space transportation company’s first national security space mission for the USA SpaceX rocket carrying a military navigation satellite blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Sunday, marking the space transportation company’s first national security space mission for the US.The Falcon 9 rocket carrying a roughly $500m GPS satellite built by Lockheed Martin lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8.51am local time. Four scheduled launches in the last week, including one on Saturday, were canceled due to weather and technical issues. Continue reading...

Our guest scientists pick the breakthroughs and discoveries that defined their year, from insights into human evolution to our first trip aboard an asteroidTake a deep breath. Dive into the emerald water. It’s 13 minutes and 70 metres down to lunch. Are you dead yet? Not if you are one of the Bajau “sea nomads” of south-east Asia, who have been free-diving like this for more than 1,000 years, relying on their remarkable physiology, and, as we learned in April, their genes. Humans left Africa 50 millennia ago, encountering new environments that required adaptation to survive. Adaptation is mostly cultural – building shelters, using fire, deciding what to eat, and transmitting instructions from generation to generation. But alongside this are advantageous genetic mutations grasped by natural selection. Continue reading...

Yuletide ghost stories have shaped my life – as well as my understanding of what happens next…Scrooge was famously haunted by three spectral visitors at Christmas time, but the tradition of telling ghost stories at midwinter goes back much further than Dickens. People have been gathering around the fire to tell stories at Yule, the pagan festival to mark the winter solstice, for centuries. As the year comes to a close, it’s natural to think about loved ones no longer with us – and what better time for ghosts to draw near than deepest, darkest winter?Thinking about the dead and remembering the past go hand in hand, especially at Christmas. Perhaps it’s no surprise the most wonderful time of the year promises scary ghost stories. Reminiscing, it seems, is as compulsory as turkey and tinsel – whether that’s talking about old times with family, re-watching comedy classics, or remembering our childhood days. When I look back at my childhood, few memories are more vivid than the time I saw a ghost. I appreciate that what I’m about to say sounds like fiction, but whether or not it was real or imagined, the experience undeniably shaped my life and the person I am today. Continue reading...

When Bill Anders took this photograph from the Apollo spacecraft on Christmas Eve in 1968, our relationship with the world changed foreverThis photograph is now half a century old. It was taken by the astronaut Bill Anders on Christmas Eve 1968 as the Apollo 8 spacecraft rounded the dark side of the moon for a fourth time. When Earth came up over the horizon, Anders scrabbled for his Hasselblad camera and started clicking.In that pre-digital age, five days passed. The astronauts returned to Earth; the film was retrieved and developed. In its new year edition, Life magazine printed the photo on a double-page spread alongside a poem by US poet laureate James Dickey: “And behold / The blue planet steeped in its dream / Of reality, its calculated vision shaking with the only love.” Continue reading...